6G networks, currently only existing as concepts, are envisioned as portals to a fully digitized society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality (XR), and also as an enabler for the Digital and Green transformation of the European Industries. To support this vision, the network capacity must be increased at least by an order of magnitude, while infrastructures must be transformed into a very dense continuum. Thus, academia and industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures. It is clear that to win this race towards shaping the next-generation communication ecosystem, a new generation of testbed infrastructures and breakthrough research and technology development is needed needed, as well as a new generation of testbeds to support future research initiative. To this end, 6G-BRICKS aims to deliver a new 6G facility, building on the baseline of mature ICT-52 platforms, that bring breakthrough cell-free and RIS technologies that have shown promise for beyond 5G networks. Moreover, novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning are explored. All enablers will be delivered in the form of reusable components with open APIs, termed “bricks“. Finally, initial integrations with O-RAN are performed, aiming for the future-proofing and interoperability of 6G-BRICKS outcomes.

EWOC project aims at developing a novel converged optical wireless network solution relying on a flexible, virtualizable infrastructure, required for full resource optimisation beyond 5G (B5G) requirements. Fundamental innovation will be sought through merging of the enabling concepts of optical layer virtualization, high frequency mm-wave transmission, multiple antenna technology, cell densification, terra-over-fiber (ToF) based femtocell connectivity and cloud radio access network (C- RAN) architecture. EWOC will aim at high capacity, low latency communications (40-90 GHz frequency), providing the basis for a 50-fold improvement over the 5G baseline. This necessitates development of novel, femto-cell technology, and seamless coexistence with first round legacy deployment. Such scenario also requires novel channel models and simulation methodologies to attain the desired trade-off between coverage, throughput and densification limits. EWOC will rely on fiber-optic deployment towards ToF connectivity, as an “added on feature” for the C-RAN architecture supporting resource management of versatile services with varying demands. Scenario compliant optical fronthaul virtualisation techniques, designed to provide cost effective beyond state-of-the-art resource optimisation, will be pursued through novel optical transceiver schemes and software defined network-based digital signal processing techniques. Research and training disciplines will serve as building blocks towards the scientific and socio-economic goals of increased capacity, coverage, flexibility, spectral efficiency, cost effectiveness, vendor agnosticism, and upgradability. EWOC provides a framework for promotion of such interdisciplinary innovation, with strong interoperability of models and methodologies from different disciplines. As such, EWOC training network is designed to foster opportunities for scientific and professional growth of ESRs from both topical and inter-disciplinary standpoints.

ORIGAMI aims at spearheading the next-generation of mobile network architecture, overcoming eight factual barriers to ensure a successful 6G future. With three critical architectural innovations - Global Service-based Architecture (GSBA), Zero-Trust Exposure Layer (ZTL), and Compute Continuum Layer (CCL) - ORIGAMI strives to create global single standards, promote green transition, boost affordability and accessibility, and inspire ground-breaking applications and fresh business models. To assess ORIGAMI's effectiveness, the project will carry out eight real-world demonstrations across six experimental sites and two large-scale international datasets from two major operators and validate our findings against twelve ambitious KPI targets. The GSBA proposed by ORIGAMI will streamline communication and interoperability across network planes, paving the way for truly global standards. The AI-aided CCL will democratize access to extremely heterogeneous computing resources and will boost resource sharing with reliability guarantees, encouraging green transition, sustainability and greater accessibility. In turn, the ZTL will enable third-party players to securely program their virtual networks in zero-trust arenas, driving innovative high-value applications and creative business models. ORIGAMI's emphasis on dependable, explainable, and unbiased AI/ML will ensure a reliable system that avoids corner case errors, setting the stage for a more connected, efficient, and sustainable telecommunications future.

EMPOWER-6G proposes a novel converged optical-wireless architecture that realizes an efficient 6G Cell-Free (CF)-based access network for high-density and high-coverage deployments. The proposed architecture takes full advantage of the distributed processing CF concept, as well as of wireless mmWave solutions, while being in-line with the O-RAN Alliance. Specifically, the EMPOWER-6G vision is based on the development of novel solutions at the radio access domain by enabling emerging CF technologies, while also contributing innovations at the optical transport domain and significantly evolving the MEC system towards fully elastic Edge Computing. The EMPOWER-6G network configuration deploys a distributed Edge infrastructure with Data Centres (DCs) structured in 2 tiers, featuring Radio Edge Regional Edge nodes, where the former DCs hosts the Network Functions of the (virtualized) RAN fully aligned with the O-RAN specifications, while the latter DCs host non-real-time network functions. Thus, EMPOWER-6G will shape a novel 6G network configuration by addressing challenges at the radio-edge, the regional-edge, and the network-management domains. At the radio-edge domain, EMPOWER-6G aims at designing novel CF networking mechanisms that will allow the significant scaling up of Radio Unit (RU) deployment in a cost-effective manner, by exploiting the application of the distributed processing CF concept, based on the disaggregation of the traditional CF Central Processing Unit (CPU) into Distributed Units (DUs) and a Central Unit (CU), in line with the 3GPP NG-RAN architecture. In parallel, EMPOWER-6G proposes an innovative mmWave Hybrid MIMO solution, with beam-steering and beam-sharing support. At the regional-edge domain, EMPOWER-6G aims at providing a new design for an optical regional edge network with FTTH support in order to achieve optimum functional splitting options, while also supporting novel control-plane protocols for CF networking support.

The 6G-SANDBOX project brings a complete and modular facility for the European experimentation ecosystem (in line and under the directions set by SNS JU), which is expected to support for the next decade technology and research validation processes needed in the pathway towards 6G. The target is at technologies and research advances, that span over the entire service provisioning chain, and refer to user/data, control and management planes. In this direction, 6G-SANDBOX introduces the concept of Trial Networks, which refers to fully configurable, manageable and controlled end-to-end networks, composed of both digital and physical nodes. The 6G-SANDBOX Trial Networks incorporate infrastructures distributed in EU (namely in Malaga, Athens, Berlin and Oulu) and offer to third parties (including experimenters from open calls) automated experimentation capabilities through a rich and extensible toolbox. Meant to create tangible and long-term impact, the 6G KPIs and KVIs that will be quantified with the facility, will be released to any interested party; while the set of developments and APIs that will be produced, will feed an open repository as an initial step to move the contributions and the lessons learned beyond the project boarders and define a European 6G library.